About a month ago, my now 7 month old half pit / half beagle dog Chloe starting going into our basement. While down there she would chew on stuff and play with things she shouldn't be. We stopped this by closing baby gates we had previously installed years before for my younger brother.

About 3 weeks ago, she started going upstairs. She's going into rooms, chewing stuff, bugging our cats, etc... If your upstairs you can't get her to go back down unless you follow / lead her. If you already downstairs, she can be verbally enticed to come back down most times.

I have searched online for a way to teach the dog not to go upstairs, but all I can find is ads for doggy stairs and tips to try to teach your dog not to be afraid of stairs.

Any tips / help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you very much.

growler~GateKeeper

October 24th, 2007, 11:01 PM

Have you tried a baby gate across the bottom step to the upstairs? You can get ones that are not physically attached to your stairwell - they are tension held, so you can easily remove them to go up yourself/or step overthem.

At 7 months this suggestion might not work so well so perhaps use it later when she has fully mastered obedience school & will reliably listen (every single time) when given a command. When she is older the other suggestion would be to try a new command like "line" something she hasn't heard before. For example:

When I got Cally (:rip::dog: he was 6 yrs old) his obedience of voice commands was good & he only knew 1 hand signal - he was taught stay in a different way it was not a "stay put where you are do not move" it was a "you can go where you want but you are not allowed to cross *this line* ie a doorway" the hand open facing down sweeping motion across a doorway - this worked for the most part but he would always try to find ways around *the line*. He was a stubborn dog though.

For a command like this you should not use the word "stay" or your dog like mine would not listen to a proper stay.